The Sea seethed. Froth churned; the sand convulsed. The bandaged cow-riding giants and their burning badgers ceased banging away at the brick wall and skittered back as Little S’s army came leaping out of every ripple of salt water. Great black, mostly toothless bilge-rats stampeded out of the sandbars wearing tricorns and long velvet coats and dashing rapiers on their hips. They held their tails like cat-o’-nines at the ready, thin and whippy and covered with scurvy sores. Behind them came the archers: well-brushed spaniels with curled ears and silk ribbons in their tails, notching chimney brushes into crab-claw crossbows. The pups remarked to their brothers in arms that their breakfast bones had not been quite so thick or so many as yesterday, but that Mumsy had promised they could all sleep on the bed tonight, so they might forgive her if she gave up some table scraps. And finally, the cavalry made their entrance. Out of the shipwrecks of Mumkeep Reef climbed a regiment of putrid princesses, skeletons in ragged, rotten gowns and tall, pointed hats covered in starfish and musketball holes. Their sea-slime hair oozed down their backs in oily braids. They wore sea slug rings on their bony fingers and sea cucumber necklaces round their bony spines. The princesses whistled to a herd of dejected merry-go-round ponies with grog-barrel cannons strapped to their saddles. The ponies sighed and bounced to their mistresses, using their carousel poles like pogo sticks. The ponies accepted their fates. What was the point of it all? They’d never know. The princesses mounted up, drawing cutlasses of their own, plundered from their own ships for one last charge.
A bilge-rat lifted a golden boiler-valve to his lips and blew through it like a hunting horn. The giants roared; the demonic cows threw themselves against the scurvy rats. The spoiled spaniels let fly a volley of chimney brushes that pierced badger after badger as they fell, the dogs howling and congratulating one another on each palpable hit. The princesses galloped full tilt, singing a ghostly war shanty, swinging their blades at giant knee and cow throat and badger snout without a care which was which.
In the midst of the fight, one last warrior hopped onto the field: a toad as big as a siege tower, its violet-and-green skin oozing exotic poisons. It fired its long pink tongue at the knees of one of the tallest giants, wrapped it round twice, and hauled him down onto the seafloor with a tremendous crash. The toad then turned and hopped back into the darker waters beyond the dueling ground, dragging her catch triumphantly behind her. In the wake of the toad, the furious waters went white with action. September could see nothing in the fizzing, boiling brine.
When the thrashing foam cleared, not one slimy braid off the skull of one putrid, valiant princess nor one bandage off the head of a giant remained. The round was a draw.
“No!” cried September. How could anything stand against rats and dogs and princesses and an incredible venomous toad? All those Saturdays had come—they ought to have won it. They were meant to have won it. Whenever another Saturday had turned up before, they’d always been on the right path.
But the Little S’s were all gone. So was the kindly brick wall that had looked after them so well.
“That’s how we are,” Big S said with a sigh. “Now you see us, now you don’t. Their time only swam alongside ours for a moment. Like ships passing overhead. They tried. I tried. We tried.”
“It’s all right,” September whispered, and pinched Saturday’s chin as they sometimes did when they didn’t know what to say to make things seem good again. “I have to do it myself. That’s what a Queen does. She saves herself.”
“You’re a grubby cheat,” Cutty Soames gloated, sure they were spent. He pulled the levers of his black sea horse so he could get a closer look at his winnings. What burned behind his gaze now was victory. He didn’t even bother calling her something outlandish. It was over. The wench had nothing. He had won. “Nothing but a silly little girl playing dress up.”
A dress appeared in the water, swinging over an invisible clothes hanger. A frilly, lacy, poufy dress that looked like a cupcake had fallen icing-first into a drawer full of fake plastic jewels. A custard-colored beaver-fur cape hung over its shoulders. Slowly, menacingly, the dress unwound its strands of plastic jewels. It drifted toward September, taking its time.
September shook her head. She gave several strong kicks, rising up to the bubble glass eye that looked right into the Night Wagon’s cabin. The dress flounced after her.
“Am not,” she called to Cutty Soames, and laughed in his face. “Not silly, not little, not playing. Look at me, you old tyrant!” September held out her cuttlefished arm. “I’ve got a tattoo! I’m a freak. I’m a weirdo. I’m the crazy, nitwit Queen of Fairyland! So go soak your head.”
And in that moment, she did want to be Queen. She wanted to be Queen so that no one like Cutty Soames could ever steal a potato or call a girl names ever again. The lace dress never got near her. The waters of Mumkeep Reef spun into a whirlpool, and out of the eye of the whirlpool flew a straitjacket. The kind of awful coat you only wear if you are Harry Houdini or a patient in the sort of dreadful places they sometimes put girls who cannot behave primly or properly. This one wasn’t hospital white, though. It had tattoos inked all over it: hearts with arrows through them, mermaids, anchors, hula dancers, five-pointed stars, roses, dragons, and, in big block letters, the words Mom and Dad and Victory.
The straitjacket unbuckled its clasps, unlocked its locks, and swept up the lace dress into its long arms. It squeezed tight, tighter, tighter still, until the dress-up gown disappeared in a puff of old perfume.
*